The Indian Left Hander Club wants to set things right for members of its tribe.

Imagine that almost every object you use in daily life is made not for you but your mirror image. Pens, notebooks, cameras, scissors (especially scissors) to name a just a few ubiquitous implements, are the wrong way round. It is a daily struggle just to be comfortable with routine tasks. Now imagine in addition to that, you are condemned for being different, possibly thought of as unclean, difficult or even touched by the devil. As a child, you might even have been punished for doing what comes naturally and you were told to suppress your instinct and instead conform to what society considers the “right” way to function.

If you are right-handed, which 88 to 90 per cent of humanity is (including this writer), you have no idea what I am talking about. If you are left-handed though, you are probably nodding along. Left-handers are a minority, and living in a world made for right-handers, can struggle to fit in and be accepted in full. In fact in India, men reject women for marriage simply because they are lefthanded. In case you think this is a pseudo-problem, it isn’t. A study in the journal Endeavour from 2012 concluded that roughly two-thirds of the world’s population (China, India and the Gulf states) still discriminates against lefties.

A few years ago, one person decided to do something about this subtle but insidious form of discrimination. Sandeip Vishnoi, a media professional who is originally from Madhya Pradesh, was hired by a media group in Maharashtra. Living in Jalgaon back in 2008 and isolated by language and culture, he was looking for a way to connect with those around him. Being a recent MBA graduate, he did a SWOT analysis and realised his left-handedness could be a strength and he could connect with people that way. So, he started giving talks at schools and then that moved to informally counselling sessions for lefties. “It became my social networking in Jalgaon,” he says. A year later, having moved to Goa, the Indian Left Hander Club (ILHC) was officially launched with a website. Today, the club operates in 18 cities and towns across the country and has over 112,000 members, almost doubling from the 58,000 members they had in 2014.

Dressed in yellow checked shirt and sporting slicked back hair, rimless glasses and a goatee, the 39-year-old Vishnoi talks about left-handedness and the “left-handed connect” with the zeal of a preacher. “In our country, still left-handedness is not accepted by society,” Vishnoi says. “They don’t understand the psychology of the person who is a leftie. This is something for which I need to create awareness, so I started this club.”

His wife and daughter are also lefthanded and according to him, societal attitudes have not changed much since he was in school. “The issue I faced in my school is the same my daughter face now. She is studying in one of the best schools in Aurangabad but the teacher stopped her and said don’t write with your left hand. She complained to me and I went to principal and explained about my club and then he started supporting. But the basic perception is the same.”

What he wants is for his club to eventually represent the entire left-handed population of the country — he estimates it at more than 10 crore — and to raise awareness of the problems they face. In order to build confidence among lefthanders, the club has organised talent competitions for lefties, hands out scholarships and conducts talks about which careers are most suited to left-handers. “Mainly, we are doing positive efforts,” he says. “We want to give a good message to society. I had done a special Havan (puja) at Kumbh Mela in 2016 with the left hand. It was strongly opposed by religious leaders but with the help of some friends, left-handers, we managed to get it done.”

Their most popular campaign, however, has been the campaign for Amitabh Bachchan to get the Bharat Ratna. Those who sign up on the website site will be sent a T-shirt that has an image of Bachchan along with the words: “I support lefty icon Sri Amitabh Bachchan for getting Bharat Ratna.” Selfies taken while wearing the t-shirt will be collected and used as part of a petition to be presented to the president on August 13 (World left-hander’s day) this year.

The club also runs a hotline for counselling services. To highlight how deep the problem can go, Vishnoi narates the story of a woman in her early twenties who called in to say she had marriage proposals turned down four times because she is left-handed and therefore would bring bad luck to her prospective in-laws. The first couple of times, she ignored it but after the fourth time, it began to weigh on her and she was worried that she would never find a husband. Vishnoi asked her to be patient. Eventually, she did get married and to a righthander too.

The club also organises monthly meetings for its members. Krushna Thore, 26, the director of a furniture business in Aurangabad, is the co-ordinator for the city. Clean-shaven and with a strong jaw, he says he used to feel out place when he was the only left-hander in a group. “You feel disturbed all day. Your mood totally changes,” he says. Thore joined the ILHC a year-and-a half ago and says it has boosted his self-confidence and that the members are like family.

In Aurangabad, a group of 15 children between the age of two and 17, accompanied by their mothers, had gathered to talk about the problems they face. All of them are members of the ILHC and are grateful for it because it has given them a community they didn’t know they needed. Speaking in Marathi, the mothers talked about how they are expected to make food at home but often can’t serve it because people don’t accept food when served with the left hand, especially in the case of prasad. But it was the children who had the most to say. “People see us as abnormal or wrong,” says 17-year-old Meetali Barhate. “A simple example is the phrase “ulta haat”. When you do something with your left hand, people ask ‘oh, you do that with your ulta haat?’ People don’t think one is right and the other left. They think one is right (shows right hand) and this is wrong (holds up her left hand).” Thanks to the ILHC, Barhate now sees herself as special because of her left-handedness and considers it an advantage. “I get a lot of profit of being a leftie. I paint very nicely because I am a leftie as the right brain is active, which controls the artistic abilities.”

Vishnoi has set himself the ambitious target of having at least one representative in 100 cities and towns in India by the end of 2017. He believes the club needs to grow faster if it is to achieve its objectives. “I am concerned about when people will realise this is a natural phenomenon,” he says. “Why people want to differentiate between right-handers and left-handers?

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